“It starts out with pink tie-dyes and the next thing you know, it becomes a regular part of your wardrobe,” moe. guitarist Al Schnier observes, while discussing the sartorial options associated with the American Cancer Society’s Rock The Pink campaign.
Schnier has assembled a stellar cast of musician to join him for a special benefit performance in support of the cause at the Ardmore Music Hall on Wednesday, October 7. The core group will include his longtime bandmate Vinnie Amico, as well as the Disco Biscuits’ Marc Brownstein and Aron Magner. Rock The Pink at the Ardmore also will feature multiple guest players, including Cotter Ellis, Jason Hann, Allie Kral, Andy Frasco, Kanika Moore and Nicki Bluhm, with proceeds directed to the American Cancer Society (multiple ticket packages are available).
As per usual, October will be a particularly active month for Schnier. moe. will make their way to the West Coast for a series of pink-abetted performances. Then they’ll wind up at the Wilbur Theater in Boston on October 30 and 31, culminating in the group’s annual Halloween show built around a movie theme, which this year is Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused. In the interim, this very weekend, Schnier and Amico are gigging with their bob. project, which interprets the music of Bob Dylan.
Throughout it all, Schnier will have the color pink on his mind and on his person. He acknowledges, “I buy so much pink stuff every year that it's kind of insane. I support all of the other bands who get involved. Last year Panic did a run of pink baseball hats and I bought all of them. I've got a whole bin full of pink stuff at this point. There are packages coming to our door every day in October.”
Before we discuss the upcoming Ardmore show, can you talk about your involvement with Rock The Pink over the years?
My wife, Melanie Francis, works for the American Cancer Society. She’s been there for over 10 years doing fundraising. One of the things that she works on is the Men Wear Pink campaign. In the month of October business leaders, politicians and people in their local community participate in this campaign and do their own fundraising to raise money for breast cancer research through the American Cancer Society.
There’s a variety of fundraising. People get pretty creative in how they do it. For instance, there’s a guy who owns our local independent sneaker store. His kids went out in their neighborhood and said, "If we hit our goal our dad promised that he would dye his hair pink for October.” I think their goal was 500 bucks and they raised the money in two days.
People do different kinds of things. There are golf tournaments, events around college football games and stuff like that.
Around five years ago, my wife recruited me to be one of her Men Wear Pink dudes. Then I recruited my band to do it along with me for the fundraising aspect.
The very first year we were part of the Men Wear Pink campaign. Then we saw that nobody in the live music world was really doing anything like this. If you think about MLB or NFL, they have their own campaigns but nobody in live music was doing anything like that. So we thought, “Why don’t we bring something like this to the music industry and start an annual campaign during the month of October.”
So that’s Rock the Pink. Like all the things that I've participated in, it started with moe., and then I asked my friends in bands like Umphrey’s and the Disco Biscuits whether they'd do it too. Last year, Melanie also had Chicago, Eric Clapton, Jeff Tweedy, Yes and all sorts of people that I don't have in my phone.
It's grown and now music venues are participating in it. Peter Shapiro is a big supporter. The whole Cap Street team is involved. It’s also done through the Brooklyn Bowls and the Garcias. Melanie has got bands and venues involved all around the country. It's awesome.
I can remember seeing those initial pink tie-dyes with the moe. logo. Even though the American Cancer Society is a large organization, what you were doing still felt very grassroots.
That's how it started. Now it's gotten to the point where you have a bunch of bands doing it, including Goose and Billy Strings. When Billy Strings does a pink print or a t-shirt, it's amazing. He's playing arenas at this point and the fans go nuts for it.
If you put out a variant of a thing and it happens to be pink, the fans absolutely eat it up. So it's been fun.
We've also done a lot of collaborations with different companies, like Fender and Souldier Straps. AnalogMan makes custom pink pedals for us every year. We’ll also get pink guitars.
moe. goes all in on this. We wear pink every night. We play pink songs on tour the entire month of October. We do a lot of fundraising around it as well. We try to lean into it and make it fun for us and our fans.
Looking ahead to the Ardmore benefit, how did that come about?
Two years ago I did a one-off at Garcia's at the Cap where the core band was me, Vinnie, Brownie and Joel from Umphrey’s. I put together this band and we had kind of a one-night gala with some auctions. moe. was still doing the entire month where we were fundraising and doing all of the various things that we do, but I wanted to host one event that was centralized. We sold out Garcia's and raised a lot of money from the auctions. It ended up being a great night.
I wasn’t able to do it last year because we were so busy. This year, I wanted to go back to either Garcia's or the Cap, but they're stacked at this point. So I reached out to Chris Perella at the Ardmore. It's one of my favorite rooms in the country and I think Chris is doing a great job. I thought it'd be good to work with his team and help build this thing. They do a lot of philanthropic work with the Rex Foundation and different stuff with the community in Philly.
In terms of the musicians, I started reaching out to all of my friends and putting together a dream list. The core four, which is me, Vinnie, Brownie and Magner is such a fun band and we've done a bunch of stuff together over the years. Every time we get together, it feels natural. We're a good fit with each other, as sort of the engine room for a one-off or a side project. It's also perfect because we're in Philly for this, so it's a home gig for them.
Speaking of the Biscuits, can you recall the first time you saw them in action?
They opened for us when we did our Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory Halloween show at Hammerstein Ballroom in 1999. That was the first time that we picked a movie theme for Halloween. It was something we landed on and we've been doing it ever since.
We already knew them by then because I remember reaching out and asking if they would be part of the show. I talked to Brownie about it but they didn't want to have anything to do with it. It was really funny. They were like, "Yeah, no, we're just going to do our thing and you guys do yours."
He kind of jokes about it to this day. He thought it was a prank or that we were going to make them Oompa-Loompas or something. Since they were the young, up-and-coming band, he thought we would punk them somehow. We were like, "No, we legitimately wanted you to be a part of our show." Then when they saw the show and realized we had this huge, enthusiastic crowd at Hammerstein that night, they were like, "Oh, we probably should have."
As you said, they were up-and-comers, a few years younger than you…
To this day, Brownie will say, "You'll always be older than me." [Laughs.]
But at some point as a practical matter that age disparity dissipates. It’s like when you’re in middle school and the people in high school feel like adults who are eons older than you. Then at some point you get out in the world in your 20s or 30s and that falls away. I don’t think any of this will occur to folks who see the four of you at the Ardmore.
Yeah, you're 100% right. That's the thing. I mean, at that time in the ’90s, they were the young upstarts, but now they're just our buddies. It's kind of the same thing with Umphrey’s. At one point, they were just kids, literally covering our songs while they were figuring out what they were doing.
They were fans of moe. and that turned into where we are now. We just spent the whole summer together. They're our buddies, but they're also eight to 10 years younger than us and going through a lot of things that we went through eight to 10 years ago.
I remember that first Bonnaroo during your big late night set when you handed your guitar to Brendan so he could play “Rebubula” at a point when they were just starting to build a national reputation for themselves. It was a cool gesture and something you’ve continued to do over the years in various ways.
We wanted to see all those guys thrive and we've always leaned into that because people did that for us, too.
There are a couple things happening with that. First off, it’s just fun to share the energy on stage with these younger bands. But we’re also happy to support their endeavors. We want to see them rise up and do good things.
It's funny, the guys in Cosmic Country call us their Uncs. Eggy does too. I guess we are to some degree, but they're also our buddies, so we’re rooting for them.
The spirit and intention that you bring to bear when it comes to supporting those groups is noted and appreciated. I think we all can get behind that.
Well that's the thing. It's great for all of us. There was an interesting situation this summer when both Disco Biscuits and moe. opened up for Goose at SPAC. They’re the young band and not very long ago we might have been in the situation where we would encourage them to open for us or have them sit in.
They've obviously had this meteoric rise and we were put into this position where we were like, "Do we want to do this? How does it look?" But we didn’t let our egos get in the way. I could not have been happier to see Goose doing good work and thriving. It was a great experience.
I was so happy that night to see them doing well. I was kind of gushing and feeling like a proud uncle even though I had nothing to do with it. But we are legitimately for people doing well. I don't know how else to say it.
There are some musicians who would bristle at that particular situation.
I understand that. It can get a little competitive or it hurts your ego somehow. We're too old to let that bother us. [Laughs.]
There was a time in our 20s when we thought we knew everything. We've gotten to the point where we realize we don't know anything.
I think that’s one of my own animating principles. The older I get the more I appreciate how much I don’t know. Then rather than puffing out my chest and feigning some authority I lack, the joy of it all is to continually discover whatever I can. That’s a lesson I’ve taken from so many musicians who continue to inspire me.
When it comes to moe. the wonderful thing about our internal friendships and relationships is that everybody is so cooperative. We have a standing band meeting once a week. It's a really great working environment where each of us doesn’t feel the need to die on every hill every time. We've learned patience over the course of 35 years.
Bringing it all the way back around to Rock the Pink, can you talk about how you’ve approached the repertoire for this upcoming show?
Historically for the Rock the Pink campaign, the thing that we do with moe. is we play pink songs. So any song that has pink in the title, references pink, or the entire Pink Floyd catalog is kind of an easy place to go. There’s also Music from Big Pink, the artist Pink. It goes on and on.
When you start thinking about it, you're like, "Oh, there's actually a lot of pink songs." It’s really fun. We actually have a separate song list, a database of pink songs that we keep and bust out every October.
I've been doing this for five or six years at this point and we continue to get creative with it. This year it's been interesting because we have Nicki Bluhm, Kanika Moore and Allie Kral as featured guests. So I encouraged them to think about songs that speak to women or empowerment.
Something else that’s kind of cool is we're going to do some original songs from Nicki, Kanika and Frasco. So it won’t entirely be the repertoire that I would lean into or that some of us would be familiar with. The songs that that everyone has brought to me are amazing and just perfect for the night.
You mentioned Halloween 1999 earlier. This year’s theme is Dazed and Confused. Can you talk about the process of coming up with that?
That first time we kind of landed on Willy Wonka and then the following year we did Wizard of Oz. We've been doing this for a while and there's always stuff on deck. The Star Wars and the Tarantino stuff had been on our list for years before we finally did each of those for Halloween. This time it was sort of the same thing. Dazed and Confused has come up a lot. The soundtrack is amazing. The movie's great.
Last year when we did The Holy Grail it was the most absurd Halloween show we've ever done but it was also one of the most fun. Our crew was literally acting out scenes from the movie and it was insane.
Our crew is fantastic about this. They will build the props for us and help us design this whole thing. It's as if we're putting on a community theater play.
Steve, our front of house engineer, is so good. He literally built an X-wing fighter and a TIE fighter when we did the Star Wars show. They're currently hanging up at the Fillmore in Philadelphia. The work that they've done for some of these shows is kind of amazing.
The way the process starts for us is we’ll talk about the music and the costumes. Then we’ll ask if it works for the fans. It has to be something that everybody is going to enjoy, not just us because we're dorks about a particular thing. So it has to check all the boxes.
I imagine it can be challenging to gauge how fans will respond to anything. When it comes to songs you’ve covered, can think of one that elicited a response that far exceeded whatever you had in mind when you decided to play it?
Something that stands out is “No Rain,” the Blind Melon song. We started covering it once Nate Wilson joined our band. It's perfectly in his vocal range. I can't remember who suggested it or why we started doing it. The way that song resonates with everybody is kind of insane. I didn't realize people loved that song or that band as much as they do. I love Blind Melon personally and I want to add more of their songs to our repertoire, but I was kind of shocked about that one. You never know sometimes.
We’ve only played Leonard Cohen's “Hallelujah” once or twice. The first time we did it was for a New Year's show. Rob sang it and you could have heard a pin drop in the room. It was so moving and so awesome, but it's not the kind of thing we can play all the time. That one hit really hard in a great way, though.
A little while ago you referenced the summer tour with Umphrey’s. Is there a particular moment either on stage or off that pops into your head as you look back on those shows?
Well, if I was going to pick a song I always come back to “Rebubula.” Brendan approached me about that one when we first met. I think we were playing in Ann Arbor. He walked up and handed me a cassette tape of Umphrey's covering “Rebubula.” He didn’t own up to the fact that he was in the band, though. He was like, "Some buddies of mine are in this band. They cover one of your songs.” Then he gave me this tape of them playing “Rebubula." So I often come back to that one. I still have the cassette tape. Every now and then I'll take a picture of it and text it to him.
Umphrey’s and moe. were doing encores together every night during the tour, and he and I largely managed that situation. We figured out what songs we were going to do and recruited players. Toward the end of the tour, he wanted to play “You Call Me Al,” and for some reason or another did not figure that I was going to sing it or even be on the song. Maybe that was part of the irony.
So Scotty sang it but and I wound up singing one of the verses, which I guess was some of the charm. [Note: The bands did this on the last night of the tour in the middle of “Rebubula.”]
But other than a song, I would say one of my favorite memories of the entire thing was being backstage at two o'clock in the morning sitting around a piano in our dressing room for what turned into this drunken karaoke situation. The only reason it stopped was because we were getting kicked out of the venue. We were singing Billy Joel songs and yacht rock songs and it was awesome.
You also have dates this month with your bob. project. Can you describe how that has developed over time?
Both Charley Orlando and I are huge Dylan fans. I've seen Bob Dylan a lot. Every time he's on tour, I make an effort to go see him.
Playing his music is so much fun because not only is there so much of it but there’s so much variety in it. There are 20 different versions of every song, which he has done historically throughout his career.
What we are trying to bring to the table is great versions of all those songs. Sometimes we’ll do other people’s versions. For example, the Grateful Dead did a very good job of rearranging some of his songs, and other people did too. So we're leaning into all of that. We play the Byrds’ version of “Mr. Tambourine Man.” We mash up Dylan’s version of “Peggy-O” with the Dead's version of it. Then you have some really interesting covers by Neko Case, the Wood Brothers, Cat Power and all these other people. So we have that same sort of freedom and liberty with all of it.
One of the songs we do is “Meet Me in the Morning” from Blood on the Tracks. It's not entirely different than the record, except that we play a 15-minute version. It's somewhere between “Cortez the Killer” and the original version. There’s this greasy quality to the song that’s implied on the record, but it comes and goes. We’ve decided to lean into it.
For this his upcoming run, at first we were thinking of adding four or five songs. Now it might be seven or eight. We keep adding more as we go because there are so many and we really haven't scratched the surface at this point. They're wonderful songs and we have a great time playing that music.
How close have you come to Dylan world over the years?
We very fortunately found ourselves in the orbit of the Grateful Dead during their post-Jerry years. We were on a Furthur Festival, toured with RatDog and did some other things. One of those was in Chicago [at Route 66 Raceway on 8/2/03] where we were the opener. I think the band was called the Dead at that time. It was us, Dylan, the Dead and Robert Hunter, who was the tweener. Unfortunately, there were horrendous summer storms that came through and took down the entire PA.
The show ended up being delayed and we got struck from the bill, although I wound up sitting in with the Dead later that night. So we stood in the vicinity of him. I guess technically I played on the same bill as him but that was it.
Since you mentioned the Grateful Dead, Bobby Weir’s birthday is in October. What first comes to mind when you reflect on your relationship with him?
It's so surreal to me because I grew up as such a fan of the Grateful Dead. Never in a million years did I think I would end up anywhere near them. Then I was on tour with them, and it got to the point where I'd walk into a room and Bobby would give me a hug. I still can't sort of reconcile that stuff. Being a 16-year-old kid on LSD watching this band, you never think, "One day we'll be friends and do gigs together."
Bobby always kind of had that rock-star persona but when I actually got to meet the man, it was not like that at all. He had a strong personality but he was always very gracious.
On stage he had big ears. Bobby listened and made space for other people. He was driven by being in that open space and having consideration for one another.
What comes to mind though is that when we did the Furthur Festival tour together, I was going through a personal situation. I was adopted and had recently started the process of trying to find my birth parents. That all came to pass during the summer while I was on tour, and Bobby had just gone through the same experience the year before.
I was so freaked out about being on tour with RatDog, Hot Tuna and all of these icons, but I also was going through this deeply personal transition. Then Bobby, of all people, became my mentor through this whole thing and wound up shepherding me through that process of meeting my birth mother for the first time. He was the one who kind of held my hand and coached me through it, which was just so surreal. I can't even believe that all of a sudden he became my personal Gandalf.
It was crazy. I was not expecting it to happen when it did. Originally they had told me: "This could be six months to a year to whenever. We don't know that we can provide any identifying information. That will be a matter of whether or not the other parties are also amenable." As it turned out, my birth mother and I both started this process at the same time. There was a synchronicity to it. Within a few days of one another, we decided that we wanted to find each other. She lived in Santa Barbara at the time and the tour was heading that way. So I had a four-to-six week process of going through this buildup.
I think it ended up happening on the second to last day of the tour. She came to the show and it was wild. She and her friends were part of a friend group that was friendly with Arlo Guthrie, who was on the tour as well. The whole thing was amazing. It happened at one of the California shows and I had Bobby as my coach.
He was just a wonderful human being.
